SEO Services for Accommodation and Holiday Letting
Accommodation work is a mix of ranking for your own name and meeting rules that no other local business has to meet.
- Your own name in search: a property page built to out-rank the booking sites for the name of your property, which is where direct bookings start
- Rate feed into Google: connecting your booking engine or channel manager so your price appears beside the property in Google's hotel results
- Search pages beyond the name: a page for each search that is not your property name, which is usually pet friendly, family, beachfront and midweek
- NSW compliance: your Property ID alongside the property details everywhere it is advertised, including your own website
- Ads aimed away from here: campaigns set to reach people searching about Byron Bay from somewhere else, the opposite setting to every local service business
- Listing eligibility check: whether you are eligible for a Google Business Profile at all, since unstaffed holiday properties are not and get taken down
Why Accommodation SEO Is a Different Game
You are not going to out-rank the booking sites for accommodation in Byron Bay and it is not worth spending money on trying, because their domains are among the largest in the world and they hold a page for your property as well. What they cannot do is write a better page about your place than you can, which is why the name search is the one to put the work into.
The second thing worth having back is the price beside your property in Google's hotel results, which comes out of a rate feed from your booking engine or channel manager rather than from anything on your website. A property with no direct feed leaves that space empty while every booking site's price stays on the screen next to it, and the free booking links themselves still cost nothing per click.
Your agreements with the booking sites then govern the rate you are allowed to publish on your own website. Since the headline price cannot undercut them, a direct booking page wins on what is included instead: the early check-in, the cot, the parking, the flexible cancellation and a phone number that reaches somebody, none of which a booking site page can offer. If the property has no page of that kind yet, building one is a small business website job before it is an SEO one.
Where I work
Holiday Letting SEO for Byron Bay and the Northern Rivers
Whether you want holiday letting SEO in Byron Bay or accommodation SEO across the Northern Rivers, the Byron Shire day cap shapes the plan before anything else does. It decides how many nights a non-hosted property has to sell, which decides whether the work goes into filling the shoulder season or into raising the rate on nights you were always going to fill.
A Google Business Profile is a separate question from the website work, because Google requires somebody contactable in person during the hours the listing claims to be open, so a staffed letting office or a reception desk is eligible and an unstaffed house is not. The Property ID from the Planning Portal is not optional either, and your own website is one of the places it has to appear.
The work behind this
The services a property needs, plus what results look like.
Other businesses I work with
Restaurants, trades and online shops as well.
From hosts
Frequently Asked Questions
Mostly about the booking sites and the letting rules.
Why does Booking.com come up before my own website?
Because they hold a page for your property on a domain far stronger than yours, and nothing on your site currently tells Google to prefer your version. The page that beats them for your own name is the one answering more than theirs does: the check-in time, the parking, what is in the kitchen, and who picks up the phone.
Can I have a Google listing for a holiday house?
Generally no. Google wants somebody contactable in person during the hours you say you are open, and it names rental and holiday properties as ineligible. A staffed letting office or a reception desk is a different matter, and a property without one is worked through its own pages instead.
Do I have to show my registration number?
Yes. The Code of Conduct requires the Property ID alongside the property details wherever the property is advertised, and your own website counts as advertising.
How many nights can I let in Byron Shire?
Sixty a year for non-hosted letting, in force since September 2024, unless the property sits in one of the two mapped precincts around the Byron Bay town centre or Brunswick Heads, which stay at 365. Hosted letting is not capped, and a booking of 21 nights or more does not count towards the cap, which is worth modelling before the cap gets tight.
Can I undercut the booking sites on my own website?
Not on the headline rate. Your agreements with them generally require the rate you publish to match theirs, which is why book direct and save is advice most Australian properties cannot follow on the headline number. What you can do is give more for the same money, a late checkout or the bikes or a bottle on arrival, and put a phone number on the page so somebody can ask.